IOTroop Botnet Hits Over a Million Organizations in Under 30 Days

The IoT botnet is expected to spread faster than Mirai.

A new IoT botnet dubbed IOTroop is expected to spread faster than Mirai because it has infected more than 1 million organizations since its discovery in late September, according to Check Point Software Technologies, which made the discovery.

IOTroop's malware seeks out vulnerabilities in wireless IP camera devices, such as GoAhead, D-Link, TP-Link, AVTECH, NETGEAR, MikroTik, Linksys, and others, Check Point states. "The malware is able to spread faster than Mirai for it leverages numerous vulnerabilities, rather than only compromising devices that use default credentials," says Maya Horowitz, Check Point's group manager of Threat Intelligence.

Although IOTroop shares some technical aspects with Mirai, Check Point stresses it is a new botnet with a far more sophisticated attack campaign. IOTroop, for example, uses the Internet of Things devices that it infects to scan additional devices and report back to the command-and-control server with its findings, Horowitz says. This helps IOTroop to accelerate the speed at which it spreads, she notes. IOTroop takes advantage of users' failure to patch existing vulnerabilities in their IoT devices, and also the ability to launch its malware without human interaction.

Dawn Kawamoto is an Associate Editor for Dark Reading, where she covers cybersecurity news and trends. She is an award-winning journalist who has written and edited technology, management, leadership, career, finance, and innovation stories for such publications as CNET's ... View Full Bio

Let them spy on me. My camera at work doesn't work, and the one at home on my laptop is always off since I only get on it once a week. The only other camera I have is a wifi to spy on the horses, but it's a piece of junk that loses power all the time. Guess best option is not to have a camera. But what about the cell? Guess someone would look in my dark pocket a lot!

How unfortunate. Cameras are among the most frequently compromised IoT devices -- and they long have been. It doesn't take a lot of time to find those exposures, either, if you know what you're doing.

Moreover, for botnet purposes, the users are left unaware. The camera still functions perfectly as a camera. Sensational headlines are generally only made if online do-badders are using those vulnerabilities to spy on people (and, even then, naturally, only when they get found out!).

Online attackers are constantly developing new, innovative ways to break into the enterprise. This Dark Reading Tech Digest gives an in-depth look at five emerging attack trends and exploits your security team should look out for, along with helpful recommendations on how you can prevent your organization from falling victim.

An exploitable vulnerability exists in the verified boot protection of the Das U-Boot from version 2013.07-rc1 to 2014.07-rc2. The affected versions lack proper FIT signature enforcement, which allows an attacker to bypass U-Boot's verified boot and execute an unsigned kernel, embedded in a legacy i...